Zionist Conspiracy

Part of the Global Plot to Expose Moonbats, conspiracy nuts, and anti-Semites, especially the Jewish anti-Semitic variety.
The leftwing Neo-Nazi web magazine Counterpunch has described Plaut thus: "One of the most pernicious writers is Steven Plaut, a man who could be thought of as Israel's Daniel Pipes."

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Yes, We have No Homosexuals

" Israelis have shown incredible courage, patience, and decency. The Nobel Prize for Peace belongs almost annually to the IDF, perhaps (if facts become known) never more so than in 2007. Israelis certainly did not choose to be the fighting front line of the democratic world and would do almost anything to escape the role in which they have been cast. But no more than Jews of past generations have they been given the choice by their enemies. Israelis should expect Jews and good people everywhere to help them shoulder the responsibility of resisting Arab aggression in deed and word."

A vegan middle school teacher who vowed to persuade schools to change their menus has been fired.

Dave Warwak of Williams Bay, Wis., was removed from the classroom at Fox River Grove Middle School earlier this month. School officials say he handed out materials on vegan diets some parents considered graphic.

The 44-year-old art teacher says he objected to the school's menu and its posters featuring milk.

The school board has voted 7-0 to fire him.

Warwak was a teacher at the school for eight years. He had been suspended with pay.

Warwak became a vegan in January. He admits urging his students to do research about animal cruelty, and the hazards meat eating.

The district superintendent and the principal told Warwak to stop sharing his vegan viewpoint. He refused.

Meantime Warwak has threatened a child endangerment lawsuit against the district for failing to inform the students about the health risks of eating meat.

It seems that a new version is now necessary, thanks to Ahmadinejed, recovering from his trip to the Upper West Side, and similars from the world of Islamofascism, insisting that there are no gays in the House of Islam.

We also thought these new lyrics, slightly adopted from Silver and Cohn, might work well:

There are no fruits on our streetNot even no Greeks.Even he seeks good things to eatAnd you should hear him speak!

When you the Ayatollah anything, he always answers "no".He just says no gays unto death,And as he dissimulates, he tells you...

"Yes! We have no homosexualsWe have no homosexuals today!!We have string beans and onions, cabBAges and scallionsAnd all kinds of fruit and sayWe have an old fashioned toMAHtoA Long Island poTAHto, but

Here is an excerpt: .Fatah men had been spying on several senior PA officials, some of whom were caught on tape having homosexual intercourse. A DVD distributed among a limited number of Hamas representatives features a former PA official having sex with another man. The disc, according to a Palestinian journalist in Gaza City, is being sold on the black market for NIS 20. According to one document, entitled .A Large Number of Homosexuals,. a number of wealthy and influential figures in the Gaza Strip had formed a .gang. for practicing homosexual intercourse . .Some of them were summoned for questioning and they admitted to having sexual intercourse with boys and adult males,. the document, dated May 12, 2005, stated . .Some of them had individual sex, while others preferred group sex. Some of them paid money for sex, while others performed sexual intercourse with males in front of their wives.. . The document described the homosexuals as a .very dangerous group. and warned that the phenomenon might spread to other parts of the Gaza Strip, adding that rival political factions could exploit the case to defame Fatah and .create chaos and confusion . .Another Hamas official said his men had uncovered three brothels that had been frequented by top Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip. In a bid to counter the Hamas campaign, Fatah members have published details about .sex scandals. involving Hamas activists. According to Fatah, a Hamas imam was recently caught having sex with a male minor in a mosque basement. In another incident, according to Fatah, a senior member of Hamas.s armed wing, Izaddin Kassam, was expelled from his refugee camp after he was caught having sex with a male colleague in a vehicle. And according to a report on a Fatah-controlled Web site, a Hamas man was caught naked together with his neighbor.s wife in her bedroom.

Friday, September 28, 2007

A Succot Story

Ahmadinejad's Holocaust MythsBy Alan M. DershowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | 9/28/2007In his speeches, most especially the one at Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeats two myths about the Holocaust. The first every reasonable person knows is a total lie: namely that the Holocaust did not occur. The second myth, however, is one that escapes critical attention for the most part, because many people are not aware of its falsity. The myth is that the Palestinian people and their leadership had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. The conclusion that is supposed to follow from this .fact. is that the establishment of Israel in the wake of the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people was unfair to the Palestinians. This is the way Ahmadinejad put it in his Columbia talk...[G]iven this historical event [the Holocaust], if it is a reality, we need to question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it. .The Palestinian people didn.t commit any crime. They had no role to play in World War II..These statements about the role of the Palestinians are demonstrably false. The truth is that the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler.s Holocaust. The Palestinian leader at the time was Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufit of Jerusalem. As Professor Edward Said has acknowledged:.Hajj Amin al-Husseini represented the Palestinian Arab national consensus, had the backing of the Palestinian political parties that functioned in Palestine, and was recognized in some form by Arab governments as the voice of the Palestinian people..Husseini was .Palestine.s national leader. and it was in that capacity that he made his notorious alliance with Hitler and played an active role in promoting the Holocaust. Here is the true story that Ahmadinejad tried to mythologize.Shortly after Hitler came to power, the Grand Mufti decided to emulate him. He informed the German consul in Jerusalem that .the Muslims inside and outside Palestine welcome the new regime of Germany and hope for the extension of the fascist anti-democratic, governmental system to other countries.. In an effort to bring it to his own country, Husseini organized the .Nazi Scouts,. based on the .Hitler Youth.. The swastika became a welcome symbol among many Palestinians.The mid to late 1930.s were marked by Arab efforts to curtail immigration and Jewish efforts to rescue as many Jews as possible from Hitler.s Europe. These years were also marked by escalating Muslim violence orchestrated by Husseini and other Muslim leaders. In 1936, Arab terrorism took on a new dimension. In the beginning the targets were once again defenseless Jewish civilians in hospitals, movie theatres, homes and stores. This was followed by strikes and shop closures, and then by the bombing of British offices. The Nazi regime in Germany and the Italian fascists supported the violence, sending .millions. to the Mufti. The SS, under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler, provided both financial and logistical support for anti-Semitic pogroms in Palestine. Adolf Eichmann visited Husseini in Palestine and subsequently maintained regular contact with him. The support was mutual, as one Arab commentator put it:.Feeling the whip of Jewish pressure and influence, the Arabs sympathized with the Nazis and Fascists in their agony and trials at the hands of Jewish intrigues and international financial pressures..The Palestinians and their Arab allies were anything but neutral about the fate of European Jewry. The official leader of the Palestinians, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spent the war years in Berlin with Hitler, serving as a consultant on the Jewish question. He was taken on a tour of Auschwitz by Himmler and expressed support for the mass murder of European Jews. He also sought to .solve the problems of the Jewish element in Palestine and other Arab countries. by employing .the same method. being used .in the Axis countries.. He would not be satisfied with the Jewish residents of Palestine - - many of whom were descendants of Sephardic Jews who had lived there for hundreds, even thousands, of years - - remaining as a minority in a Muslim state. Like Hitler, he wanted to be rid of .every last Jew.. As Husseini wrote in his memoirs:.Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: .The Jews are yours..The Mufti was apparently planning to return to Palestine in the event of a German victory and to construct a death camp, modeled after Auschwitz, near Nablus. Husseini incited his pro-Nazi followers with the words .Arise, o sons of Arabia. Fight for your sacred rights. Slaughter Jews wherever you find them. Their spilled blood pleases Allah, our history and religion. That will save our honor.. In 1944, a German-Arab commando unit, under Husseini.s command, parachuted into Palestine and poisoned Tel Aviv.s wells.Husseini also helped to inspire a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq and helped to organize thousands of Muslims in the Balkans into military units known as Handselar divisions which carried out atrocities against Yugoslav Jews, Serbs and Gypsies. After a meeting with Hitler, he recorded the following in his diary:The Mufti: .The Arabs were Germany.s natural friends. They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in a war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and the unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq..Hitler: .Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well. Hitler. Germany.s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. The moment that Germany.s tank divisions and air squadrons had made their appearance south of the Caucasus, the public appeal requested by the Grand Mufti could go out to the Arab world..It is fair to conclude that the official leader of the Muslims in Palestine, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a full fledged Nazi war criminal and he was so declared at Nuremberg and sought by Yugoslavia as a war criminal after the war. He escaped to Egypt where he was given asylum and helped to organize many former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers against Israel.It is also fair to say that Husseini.s pro-Nazi sympathies and support were widespread among his Palestinian followers, who regarded him as a hero even after the war and the disclosure of his role in Nazi atrocities. According to his biographer,.Haj Amin.s popularity among the Palestinian Arabs and within the Arab states actually increased more than ever during his period with the Nazis. [because] large parts of the Arab world shared this sympathy with Nazi Germany during the Second World War..Nor was it merely a hatred of Zionism that animated this support for Nazi ideology. The grand mufti.s .hatred of Jews.was fathomless, and he gave full vent to it during his period of activity alongside the Nazis (October 1941-May 1945).. His speeches on Berlin Radio were anti-Semitic to the core: .Kill the Jews wherever you find them.this pleases God, history and religion.. In 1948, the National Palestinian Council elected Husseini as its president, even though he was still a wanted war criminal living in exile in Egypt. Indeed, Husseini is still revered today among many Palestinians as a national hero. Yasser Arafat, in an interview conducted in 2002 and reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds on August 2, 2002, calls Haj Amin al-Husseini .our hero,. referring to the Palestinian people. Arafat also boasted of being .one of his troops,. even though he knew he was .considered an ally of Nazis.. (If a German today were to call Hitler .our hero,. he would appropriately be labeled a neo-Nazi.!)It is a myth therefore . another myth perpetrated by Iran.s myth-maker-in-chief . that the Palestinians played .no role. in the Holocaust. Considering the active support by the Palestinian leadership and masses for the losing side of a genocidal war, it was more than fair for the United Nations to offer them a state of their own on more than half of the arable land of the British mandate. The Sudeten Germans got a lot less!

2.September 28, 2007

Antiterror VindicationSeptember 28, 2007; Page A14You probably haven't seen it reported, but the Guantanamo trial system for enemy combatants won a big victory earlier this week. A military appeals court overturned a much-ballyhooed decision in June that had dismissed all charges against Omar Ahmed Khadr, an al Qaeda operative captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002 after killing an American serviceman with a grenade.The June decision was widely portrayed as a repudiation of the Bush Administration's antiterror legal policy, so perhaps this should be described as vindication. Under the 2006 Military Commissions Act, a panel called the Combat Status Review Tribunal makes a threshold determination of whether or not terror detainees are enemy combatants, before they are moved into military tribunals. Judge Peter Brownback ruled in June that the Review Tribunal had only screened for "enemy combatants," not "unlawful enemy combatants," thus giving his court no jurisdiction.Never mind that "enemy combatant" is defined in a way that is inherently "unlawful" -- i.e., someone who is part of an international terrorist organization and engages in hostilities against the U.S. in violation of the laws of war. The legal hitch was not using the magic word "unlawful."The appeals panel agreed that the Review Tribunal had not specifically determined that Khadr was an unlawful enemy combatant, but it also ruled that it wasn't obliged to. Rather, it said Judge Brownback ought to have considered the unlawfulness of Khadr's conduct under common courts-martial procedures, as defined by the Military Commissions Act. To do otherwise, let alone dismiss the charges, was "contradictory to the statute's clear structure, wording, and overall intent."There's little doubt how the coming trial will turn out. There is a video, for instance, of Khadr preparing explosives to be used against American forces. But in the media's current terror narrative, it's only worth celebrating when the Bush Administration's judicial rules are overturned. When they're upheld, almost nobody notices -- so we thought you'd like to know. URL for this article:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119094417329442190.html

By the way, this is hardly the world's most pressing matter, but I really resented the fact that the Jewish girl in the Gilmore Girls has a poster of Noam Chomsky on the wall of her dorm room. No - it is not a show I ordinarily watch, but when I am on a treadmill in the gym I look for TV shows to watch that do not require thought because my brain is not getting much oxygen. (Of course half the professors in Israel have brains that NEVER get any oxygen!) And in one of the episodes of Gilmore Girls assaulting me upon the treadmill, Paris (played by a Jewish actress), the neurotic Jewish girlfriend of the younger Gilmette, has a huge poster of the Chomsky on the wall of her dorm room. A neurotic Jewish coed having a pretentious name who likes arch-Stalinist anti-Semite Noam Chomsky? Talk about offensive ethnic stereotyping!For more on this atrocity, see

Here is the dialogue from one episode:PARIS: I'm not alone.JANET: Oh, really? Who do you have besides your poster of Noam Chomsky?PARIS: Who do I have?JANET: Yeah. [Paris begins to speak but falls silent.] That's what I thought. Very sad.[Janet exits to her bedroom. Paris stomps off to her own bedroom, followed by Rory.]PARIS: I'm gonna grab Barbie's neck and squeeze until her expandable hair falls out and she's dead, dead, dead.(kind of like Noam Chomsky's Khmer Rouge friends affectionately squeezing the life out of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians?)

Carlo Strenger wants to see Israel boycotted, Israel is the cause for terrorism, "that shitty little country" he quotes.Here is the learned scholar: .Israel's way of dealing with the Palestinians and Lebanon in the last few decades has led to a long-term process in which the Western world is beginning to see Israel as a pariah state that has no true affinity to Western values. Hence, it is not on the 'right' side of the clash of civilizations, as was reflected in the French ambassador to Britain calling Israel "that shitty little country" not long ago.'This development is consistently disregarded by Israeli decision makers. Short-term political bickering is on their minds more than the survival of Israel, which in theory is their main goal. Any criticism of Israel's policies is dismissed as an expression of the New Anti-Semitism. The proof often provided is that we are not judged by the same standard as our neighbors: "Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia can get away with inhuman behavior a lot worse than ours," the argument runs...My argument is not just about being loved by the world - though this factor must not be dismissed. Many of us believe that Israel's moral fiber has been fatally harmed by the occupation and by the two Lebanon wars. The result is that both morally and strategically, the continued occupation and subjugation of the Palestinian people has put us on the wrong side of history.'(So when were we on the RIGHT side of history? 1943? -- SP)

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Israeli Literary Left Rallies for the Hamas

Don't you just love how Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was all in favor of giving Mahmoud Ahmadinejad free speech on campus just as long as he was merely demonizing Dem Joos and denying the Holocaust. After all, free speech and democracy and all. It is good to let everyone have their say. Bollinger has a long history of defending campus faculty jihadniks.

But then Ahmadinejad goes and disappoints the President of the university that long hosted Edward Said, the professor of terror, and is sometimes known as the Madrassa of the Upper West Side. Bro' Mahmoud had the temerity to diss the gays, and at Columbia U no less! What chutzpa! Suddenly in Bollinger.s opinion Ahmmadinejad becomes a "petty, cruel dictator."

When asked about gay folks in Iran, CNN reports: 'Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, "We don't have homosexuals" in Iran. "I don't know who told you we had it," he said.'

Oh dear. You realize what this means? This might actually alienate the leftist moonbats who so adore Iran, and disrupt the Axis of Evil that links leftism with Islamofascism! Tikkun Magazine and Meretz might be forced to renounce their sympathies for Iran.

Where will it lead?

2. Israel.s Literary Left Rallies for the Hamas:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123767Leftist Authors Petition on Behalf of Hamas13 Tishrei 5768, 25 September 07 10:04by Ezra HaLevi(IsraelNN.com) Eleven of Israel.s most prominent leftist authors and members of the intellectual elite have published a call to negotiate with the Islamist Hamas terror group.The statement, which was dispatched to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and published in Haaretz, calls upon Olmert to .make every possible effort. to reach a diplomatic agreement with Mahmoud Abbas and to open up negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire."We believe an opportunity to promote the peace process ahead of the international conference in November has been created,. the statement says. .We urge the prime minister to make the greatest effort to reach substantial agreements with the PLO head and not miss this opportunity."The continued Qassam attacks from the Gaza Strip are intolerable. In the past Israel has negotiated with its worst enemies. And now, the correct course of action is to negotiate with Hamas in an effort to foment a general cease fire that will prevent further suffering on both sides."These talks must include an attempt to reach a complete ceasefire, without preconditions. An end to the mutual attacks would give the residents of the western Negev a sense of security, would spare the Gaza vicinity residents any further suffering, and would increase the political process' chances of succeeding."The signatories are A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Meir Shalev, Eli Amir, Savion Librecht, Yehoshua Sobol, Esti G. Haim, Prof. Alice Shalvi and Dorit Ravinian.The signers are featured as commentators on state-run television on a nearly daily basis and represent the trend among the Tel Aviv caf crowd and privileged political elite. Oz was one of the founder of Peace Now and most of the signatories are affiliated with the far-left Meretz Party.Grossman, Oz and Yehoshua, along with several other of the signatories, took part in the signing of the Geneva Accords initiative, which is very similar to the leaked versions of PM Olmert.s negotiated settlement with Mahmoud Abbas. During the height of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, the three held a press conference calling for a UN-backed cease-fire. Grossman lost his son, Uri, in the Second Lebanon War.The cease-fire was adopted in the end, but has been severely criticized for entrusting the UN with preventing Hizbullah from rearming. IDF intelligence has report that Hizbullah has reached and even surpassed its pre-war capabilities with the help of the cease-fire.

We, users of Adobe's products, wish to express our resentment and protest against the acts and statements of Mr. Reuven Agassi, chairman of Quicksoft Ltd., which officially represents Adobe in Israel.

Mr. Agassi has recently stated in public that he will not employ anyone who did not serve in the Israeli army or did national service, and called on other companies to do the same.

Such blatant discrimination is prohibited under Israeli law. We would like to point out that over 20% of the Israeli population is non Jewish and is not required to serve in the military. Furthermore we would like to emphasis that the present discussion regarding conscription, obligatory or voluntary, and the debate regarding alternative civilian service are an important elements in the democratic dialogue being held in Israel today. Your browser may not support display of this image.

Many young Israelis avoid serving the State as an act of protest against the policies of the Israeli government. Avoiding military service for many represents a rejection of militarism, so widespread in Israeli society, a militarism exemplified all too well by Mr. Agassi.s statement.

In his public statement, Mr. Agassi offended many of Adobe's customers in Israel. We are convinced that Adobe, represented by Mr. Agassi, does not wish to offend its customers and that Mr. Agassi's statement will have a negative effect on Adobe's international public relations. We find Mr. Agassi.s statements to be inappropriate for a company that practices fair employment policies.

We call on Adobe to publicly denounce the statements made by its representative in Israel.Sincerely,The Undersigned

6. An absolute MUST read: The Top 200 Chomsky Lies, by Paul Bogdanor -

Now Katriel is little more than a marginal figure in Israeli society, adogmatic communist still trying to apply in the Middle East would wasrejected massively by all the peoples in the old Soviet Union and EasternEurope less than two decades ago.

What is noteworthy is that Prof. Rivka Carmi, the president of Ben GurionUniversity, appears to be collaborating with Katriel in some of his efforts.

The following was posted on September 23, 2007 on the chat list of "ICRRIsraeli Committee for Residency Rights <http://groups.google.com/group/icrr>,"an anti-Israel communist front organization. It officially describes itselfthus: "The ICRR is an Israeli committee concerned with Palestinian residencyrights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories." Evidently all of Israel ispart of the "Occupied Palestinian Territories," in the opinion of ICRR,because much of its efforts and activities have to do with gettingpermission for various Palestinians (including those with foreign passports)and other Arabs to enter Israel. ICRR is one of countless microscopicfar-Leftist and communist-front Israel-bashing Israeli organizations, mostof which contain pretty much the exact same list of members.

The posting on ICRR by Jacob Katriel concerning Carmi is evidently part ofan ongoing correspondence between her and Katriel regarding Carmi'sendorsing and promoting the political campaign led by Katriel and his cadresto pressure Israel to relax regulation of "academics" entering the West Bankand Gaza to teach in Palestinian universities.

Because of the security situation, Israel has been more cautious in grantingtransit visas to people entering the West Bank and Gaza through Israel as"foreign professors." In addition, Israel has been cracking down onPalestinian students from the West Bank entering Israel and on theactivities of Palestinian institutions, as part of the general set ofsecurity controls and sanctions against the Palestinian Authority for itsongoing misbehavior and terrorist aggression. (In the opinion of ICRR ofcourse these are all legitimate acts of Palestinian self-defense!)

Israel does not always grant automatic approval to foreigners seeking totravel to the West Bank and Gaza through Israel. Some of the foreign"academics" who want to enter to teach at Palestinian colleges arethemselves Arabs with foreign passports. Others are no doubt from thefamiliar anti-Semitic international "solidarity" and "anarchist"organizations. Some may be suspect for one reason or another. Given thesecurity situation, each applicant is carefully reviewed and processed byIsrael. If anything, Israel is not selective enough, as seen in the factthat so many international "anarchists" get through the inspections andenter the "occupied territories" to make trouble. It should be borne inmind that Palestinian "universities" are generally little more than centersof radical indoctrination, and in some cases have been used for terroristtraining and activities. Hence Israel has an interest in who passes throughIsrael to work in them.

Katriel and his people have been trying to recruit Israeli university headsfor their campaign to end all Israeli discretionary inspections andregulation over who gets such visas and who does not. So far, the Katrielgroup appears only to have succeeded in recruiting Prof. Rivka Carmi,president of Ben Gurion University, from among Israeli academic officers. BenGurion University (BGU) is renowned as one of the worst centers ofanti-Israel faculty activism and "Post-Zionism" in Israel, possibly the veryworst. Much of the on-campus political activity at BGU, includingin-classroom indoctrination, appears to enjoy approval and endorsement byCarmi (see http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=4199 ).

In part of his Sept. 23, 07 posting on the ICRR chat list, Katriel publishedCarmi's note to him that reads as follows:

*Shalom again, Hamatchil be'mitzva (that is Hebrew for – "He who begins a Mitzvah" –meaning those who only begin a good deed still get credit for the wholemitzvah -- SP)*

*....I suggest that you write a letter along these lines to Kaveh (the headof the Committee of Israeli University Presidents or VERA – SP) c/c otherpresidents (or at least bcc me). I shall push this idea forward but I need a"formal" approach of VERA.Thanks,Rivka** *

The initiative that the President of Ben Gurion University is asking to joinand support is Katriel's idea of pressuring Israel's government to relaxoversight and regulation of who may pass through Israel on transit visas toteach at Palestinian universities.

The idea of pressuring the Israeli government to relax its diligence overwho enters Israel in transit for the West Bank and Gaza is what Carmi isdescribing as a "mitzvah," a strange term to be using in a letter from herto a Stalinist academic.

Thank you very much for your message, that I have read yesterday evening. I took the time to consider it carefully, and decided to ask you to adhereto the original request stated in the Letter to the University Presidentsand Rectors. The 150 signatories of this Letter requested the interventionof the leaders (Presidents and Rectors) of the Israeli Universities. Theyspecifically asked you to contact the Minister of the Interior, the Ministerof Education, and CoGAT (The Coordinator of the Government Activities inthe Territories).

Any deviation from this agenda would amount to discarding this Letter, whichI am neither authorized to nor willing to do.

Let me emphasize that the Letter was sent to the Presidents and Rectorsindividually, not to VERA. If a united VERA action could be launched itwould certainly have been more effective. However, we at ICRR realize thatsome members of VERA do not share our view that Palestinian Universitiesdeserve to enjoy the basic freedoms that we, Israeli academics, take forgranted, and some may be too cowardly to speak up. Therefore, the Letterrequested each President and each Rector to make their own decision abouthow they act. In the cover letter that I added the first time that I sentthat Letter I asked each recipient to forward it to the other Presidents andRectors, indicating that I may have failed to identify the correct emailaddresses of some. However, a consensus within VERA may be too much to hopefor, and therefore I would appreciate it if you send the Letter (andwhatever part of our correspondence you find helpful) to the other members of VERA, but do not tie yourself totheir consensus.

Rather, we believe that the Minister of the Interior (Mr. Shitreet) will notrefuse your phone call, in which we ask you to recommend that he accepts adelegation of ICRR with the aim of issuing a regulation that will guaranteeFULL YEAR visas (with multiple entries) to foreign-passport holding facultymembers (and students) in the Palestinian Universities. It could help ifyou call the Minister of Education (Prof. Yuli Tamir) and ask her to talk toMr. Shitreet so that he understands that faculty members have a full yearteaching obligation and entry visas for periods of random lengths, thatnever exceed three months but could be one or two weeks, are simply notsatisfactory.

In our meeting with CoGAT (General Yussef Mishlav) we found out that it hadnever occurred to him that a faculty member requesting an entry visa cannotbe satisfied with anything that does not extend for the whole academic year.Nor can her/his employer and students. In any case, granting visas forperiods longer than three months is beyond the authority of General Mishlavand will require a decision by Mr. Shitreet or perhaps the government. It isquite possible that Mr. Shitreet, just like General Mishlav, needs to bemade aware that faculty members need full year visas, which is where YuliTamir can help.

We did apply for a meeting with Mr. Shitreet, but so far he has notresponded.

Please consider my request, and after trying to lead a joint action ofseveral heads of universities, do not give up if the only thing you can dois act on your own. In the final analysis, it is your conscience that youwill have to face.

Shalom again, Hamatchil be'mitzva....I suggest that you write a letter along these linesto Kaveh c/c other presidents (or at least bcc me). I shall push this ideaforward but I need a "formal" approach of VERA. Thanks, Rivka

__________

The statement Katriel is recruiting support for follows:

* *

*To: Presidents and Rectors of the Israeli Universities.*

* *

*Save the foreign passport holding faculty members of PalestinianUniversities.*

*Request for intervention by the Presidents and Rectors of the IsraeliUniversities.*

* *

A significant number of faculty members in the Palestinian Universities holdforeign passports and their continued service depends, as long as theoccupation persists, on permits issued by the Israeli authorities.

We are very concerned by recent reports on newly imposed restrictions thatreflect a policy threatening the possibility of these foreign passportholding faculty members to continue their essential work at PalestinianUniversities.

Requests for visa extensions, addressed to Israeli authorities, are beingresponded by demands for "work permits", without, however, specifying howand where to get such permits. Short term visa renewals of 3 months, givenunder pressure of foreign embassies and the international media, do not evenguarantee that a faculty member will be able to teach a full semesterwithout a constant fear of being deported.

You, the heads of Israeli Universities, do not need to be told how essentialthe functioning of universities is for the building of a civil society and aviable economy.

We are therefore requesting you kindly to intervene with the Minister of theInterior and with the Coordinator of the Government's Activities in theTerritories, urgently and effectively, to secure a fair and transparentprocedure to enable staff holding foreign passports to engage in academicactivities, teaching and research, at Palestinian Universities, withoutthreats of deportation.

Your immediate and forceful intervention is needed in order to avoid pendingdisruption of academic activities in Palestinian Universities, were theirforeign staff forced to leave now.

Sincerely yours,

(The Israel Committee for Residency Rights, and signed by a group offar-leftist and anti-Zionist Israeli faculty members)

Sunday, September 23, 2007

The Book of Jonah and the Battles in Iraq

1, This appeared in the Wall St Journal, just before Yom Kippur:

Jonah's Dilemma

By MICHAEL B. OREN and MARK GERSONSeptember 21, 2007; Page A14

This year, as on every Yom Kippur, Jews throughout the world will recite theBook of Jonah, one of the Hebrew Bible's shortest and most enigmatic texts.Jonah is the only Israelite prophet to preach to Gentiles, and the onlyprophet who clearly hates his job. And yet Jews read the book on theirholiest day of the year because of its message of atonement and forgiveness.But Jonah also conveys crucial lessons for all Americans as they grapplewith crises in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and yearn forfar-sighted leadership.

"Go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it," God commands Jonah,explaining that the Assyrians must repent for their sins or facedivinely-unleashed destruction. The task seems straightforward, yet Jonahbalks. He tries to flee, first to sea and later to the desert. If Ninevehheeds his warnings and is spared, its citizens will later question whetherthe city was really ever in danger and assail Jonah for forcing them to makeneedless sacrifices. But if Nineveh ignores his exhortations and isdestroyed, then Jonah has failed as a prophet. Either way he loses -- that'sthe paradox of prophecy. And so he bolts, only to discover that God will notlet him out of that bind. Jonah must be swallowed by a big fish beforebegrudgingly accepting his mission.

Jonah's quandary is routinely encountered by national leaders, especiallyduring crises. Winston Churchill, for example, prophetically warned of theNazi threat in the 1930s, but if he had convinced his countrymen to strikeGermany pre-emptively, would he have been hailed for preventing World War IIor condemned for initiating an unnecessary conflict? As president in 1945,Harry Truman predicted that Japan would never surrender and that a quarterof a million GIs would be killed invading it. And so he obliteratedHiroshima and Nagasaki, only to be vilified by many future historians. Butwhat if the atomic bombs were never dropped and the Battle for Japan claimedcountless casualties -- would history have judged Truman more leniently?

Recent presidents, in particular, have struggled with such dilemmas whilewrestling with the question of terror. Jimmy Carter failed to retaliate forthe takeover the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S.Marines out of Beirut in 1983 after Islamist bombers destroyed theirheadquarters, and Bill Clinton remained passive in the face of successive alQaeda attacks. And yet, had these presidents gone to war, would Americanstoday credit them with averting a 9/11-type attack or would they have beendenounced for overreacting? If American leaders had stood firmly earlier inIran, Lebanon or Afghanistan, would U.S. troops today be battling in Iraq?

President Bush presents a striking example here. After 9/11, he cautionedthat the United States would again be attacked unless it acted pre-emptivelyin Iraq. But while there is no way of knowing whether terrorists would havestruck America if President Bush had refrained from invading Iraq, manyAmericans now denounce the president for initiating an avoidable, unwinnablewar. This is the tragedy of leadership. Policy makers must decide betweencostly actions and inaction, the price of which, though potentially higher,will ultimately remain unknown -- a truly Jonah-like dilemma.

Unlike presidents, of course, Jonah knew the outcome of his decision: Apenitent Nineveh would not be destroyed by God. And yet he so feared theparadox of prophecy that he risked his life to escape it. In the end, thecitizens of Nineveh repented and were saved -- and the Book of Jonah wasrevered by Jews, Christians and Muslims.

America's leaders, by contrast, are unlikely to replicate Jonah's goodfortune. They must decide whether to keep troops in Iraq, incurring untoldlosses of American lives and resources, or whether to withdraw and projectan image of weakness to those who still seek to harm the U.S. If diplomaticefforts fail to deter Iran from enriching uranium, American policy makerswill have to determine whether to stop the Islamic Republic by force orcoexist with a highly unstable, nuclear-armed Middle East. They will bereproved for the actions they take to forestall catastrophe, but may receiveno credit for averting cataclysms that never occur. For Mr. Bush and hissuccessors, this will remain the tragic dilemma of leadership. It is an onusworth contemplating on this and every Yom Kippur.

Mr. Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center and author of "Power, Faith,and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present," is a visitingprofessor at Yale. Mr. Gerson is co-founder and chairman of the GersonLehman Group.

2. In the spirit of Yom Kippur? Benny Morris, once the godfather of Ben Gurion University Post-Zionism, has written a surprisingly good column:

Want electricity? Stop the rocketsBy Benny MorrisSeptember 22, 2007'It's about time" was the reaction of most Israelis to the government's decision on Wednesday to impose further economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip and to define it as "hostile territory." The government spoke specifically of cutting off electricity to Gaza's inhabitants if more Kassam rockets were launched from the Hamas-controlled territory, and of a possible fuel cutoff down the road.

A variety of terrorist groups -- Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Fatah-associated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade -- have been firing the primitive, home-made Kassams at Israel's border settlements since the end of 2001, and the first ones landed in the border town of Sderot in March 2002. The rockets have so far inflicted relatively few casualties and little damage -- more than 1,000 have been fired, killing about a dozen Israelis and seriously injuring several dozen -- but they have caused widespread unease or panic in Sderot. Dozens of families have moved out of the area in recent months after the Israel Defense Forces, deploying a variety of means including cross-border armored incursions, ambushes and helicopter missile attacks on the rocket teams, proved unable to stop the rocketeers. The IDF measures sometimes resulted in collateral damage and casualties, triggering condemnation by human rights groups and Western politicians and media.

How did it come to this? In the summer of 2005, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally pulled the IDF out of Gaza and uprooted Israel's settlements in the area, leaving the territory -- but not the border crossings to it -- completely in Palestinian hands. The Israeli leadership hoped that this would result in the cessation of terrorism from the area. But the opposite occurred: The number and variety of rockets hitting Israel increased.

Since June, when Hamas took control of Gaza, it has allowed Islamic Jihad and other terror groups to continue rocketing Israel, and it supplies these groups with Kassams when they run short, according to Israeli intelligence. Hamas engineers are said, also by Israeli intelligence, to be hard at work on producing Kassams with more powerful warheads and longer ranges. Indeed, a handful of improved Kassams even reached the southern outskirts of the city of Ashkelon, north of Gaza. Last week, a rocket hit a tent camp of IDF trainees, injuring 50 soldiers, three of them severely.

Wednesday's decision by the government, bowing to public opinion, is the response to the continued rocketing. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Cabinet clearly hope that a staggered cutoff of electricity -- Israel supplies the strip with 120 megawatts of its 200-megawatt consumption (the remaining 80 megawatts come from Egypt and an Arab-owned plant inside Gaza) -- will lead to popular local pressure on Hamas to stop the rocketing, which most Israelis regard as insufferable on both a symbolic and practical level. The government clearly hopes that this measure will receive Washington's blessing -- and less diplomatic fallout than military reprisals.

The Israeli cutoff of electricity will leave Gaza with sufficient energy to run all its hospitals, government offices and other vital services but will no doubt result in many of the 1.5 million inhabitants suffering periodic blackouts. If a fuel cutoff is eventually added to this -- Israeli government lawyers are looking into the matter in terms of international humanitarian law -- the result could be far more severe. But this is what Israel is threatening -- if Palestinian terrorists continue to rocket Israel's border.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Will Israel's Cabinet Minister Yuli Tamir start a war with Egypt?

1. I know this is really going to upset the Israeli Minister of Education. But the New York Times reported Sept. 20, 07 that there are people in Egypt opposed to female "circumcision," meaning female genital mutilation.

In Egypt the procedure is done under filthy conditions and sometimes results in the death of young girls (it is done to them when they are 13 years old). The Times reports: "A nationwide campaign to stop the practice has become one of the most powerful social movements in Egypt in decades, uniting an unlikely alliance of government forces, official religious leaders and street-level activists. Though Egypt's Health Ministry ordered an end to the practice in 1996, it allowed exceptions in cases of emergency, a loophole critics describe as so wide that it effectively rendered the ban meaningless. But now the government is trying to force a comprehensive ban."

The NY Times article gets more graphic from there, but I will spare you the details.

Now why will this news upset Israel's Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir, better known for introducing school programs in Arab schools that teach that Israel's very existence is a "Naqba" or catastrophe?

Madame Tamir is a great fan of the "Clitoridectomy." That word means what you think it means. Eleven years ago she published an article endorsing and defending the practice, and denouncing those narrow-minded Western racists who express disgust at it. The problem is not the "Clitoridectomy," insists Tamir in that article, but the intolerable denunciations of it by patriarchal bigoted women-hating Westerners who fail to respect the cultural practices of The Other. For more citations from Tamir's rant, go here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2274

You realize what this means? While Israel's relations with Egypt are not very good, once Tamir starts denouncing the Egyptians who criticize and oppose female genital mutilation, this will enrage Egypt and could even trigger a new all-out Middle East war!! True, Egypt got very angry, diplomatically-speaking, when Israeli comedian Eli Yatzpen made fun of President Mubarak on TV, but that is nothing! Egypt might attack Israel with missiles to force Tamir's removal if Israelis do not fire the educational airhead themselves!!

3. The Moonbatocracy is pulling its remaining hairs out each time a campus refuses to host an anti-Jewish terrorist, a Holocaust Denier, or a ranting lying pseudo-scholar. Interestingly, none of them had any words or ire when the Davis campus of the University of California dis-invited ex-President of Harvard Larry Summers (see

4. Seems like no one can get fired these days in academia without it all somehow being the fault of the Zionist bogeyman.

Case in point. The University of California at Irvine (where I once taught) is opening a law school. The candidate for the First Dean at the School is one Erwin Chemerinsky, a left-leaning law professor fairly well known in academic law circles, especially for his politically correct activism. He is politically active in things like battling capital punishment and preventing action against illegal aliens. He is also mildly anti-Israel, although all but unknown as an Israel-basher when comparing him to his fame as a politically correct liberal activist. He represented the nutty Corrie family when they sued Caterpillar for their idiotic daughter.s suicide on behalf of terrorism, and he is a member in an anti-Zionist Jewish leftist organization (Jewish Progressive Alliance). But all that is pretty tame by today.s campus standards.

And especially by UCI standards. UCI has been the center for a growing plague militant Islamofascist student organizations who make no secret of what they think should be done with the Jews. UCI also hosts the full-time anti-Israel propagandist, Tikkun member and Finkelstein clone, Mark Levine, who spells his name LeVine to give himself fake Norman airs, and whom I call Mark La La Vine. See him here:

Now, the UCI campus notwithstanding, Orange County, in which the campus sits, is a rightwing Republican place and not particularly Jewish and contains its share of conservative anti-Semites, some quite vocal. The local donors to UCI were not happy with the choice of Chemerinsky, not because of his pathetic campaign on behalf of the Corries but because they do not like his leftist political activism.

UCI.s Chancellor then un-appointed Chemerinsky as Dean, but a few days later appointed him again. The Chancellor at UCI has never been very upset by the Bash-the-Jews activities on campus of the Islamofascists and jihadniks, refused to denounce anti-Semitic bigotry in a manner like Larry Summers, but was nervous about losing donations from conservative gentiles (see http://defconblog.org/2005/09/time-to-fight-the-religious-right/ ).

Meanwhile, the best article on the affair and on UCI so far is by Susan Estrich, a law professor athttp://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20070914/cm_uc_crsesx/op_393831I reprint it here in full:The Most Corrupt Man In CaliforniaSusan Estrich How do you get hired and fired from a prestigious position in the same week?That is what happened to my friend Erwin Chemerinsky. He signed a contract to become the first dean of the new law school at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) last week. Then, days later, he was fired because the UCI chancellor decided his liberal opinions made Erwin, one of the most respected, quoted, cited and beloved constitutional law scholars in the country, "too politically controversial" for the job.Hogwash.This column isn't about Erwin. In the world of law professors, everyone who knows Erwin . liberal and conservative . respects him. The outpouring of support for him and the disgust at what was done to him have been overwhelming. It's about the cowardly fool who is leading his university down the tubes, the one who should be fired by the Board of Regents when it meets next week."Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."So wrote Professor Lord Acton, who was the Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, even though he had not been allowed to attend Cambridge as a student because he was Roman Catholic. In the same year, 1877, in a famous lecture on "The History of Freedom in Antiquity," Acton defined liberty as "the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty, against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion."By Lord Acton's standard, Dr. Michael Drake, Chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, is the most corrupt man in California. His job is, or should be, to protect the "liberty" of both students and faculty, the academic freedom that is the cornerstone of great universities.But Dr. Drake has a twisted view of academic freedom, one that allows Muslim students to engage in open anti-Semitism, to hold rallies on campus attacking Zionist control of the media, equating Jewish support for Israel with Hitler's Nazis, even (according to campus Republicans) displacing previously scheduled Young Republicans meetings with rallies denouncing Israel's right to exist. But there's no room for a liberal, Jewish law professor who is routinely the object of bidding wars between top-rated law schools vying for his services.Last February, Hillel of Orange County formed a task force to investigate what it viewed as a troubling number of anti-Semitic speeches and incidents on the UCI campus, including complaints by Jewish students that they were being followed and harassed by their Muslim classmates. That was before UCI's Intifada week this past spring, which included speakers supporting the terrorist group Hamas and a speech entitled "Zio-Nazis." That was before the infamous Ward Churchill, defender of the 9/11 attacks, was invited to speak on campus.This past June, at a meeting attended by hundreds of concerned members of the Jewish community in Irvine, Dr. Drake told one parent, whose children don't want to attend UC Irvine because of the virulent expressions of hatred, not to worry because these incidents "are not every other day. It's a couple times a year." Asked why he didn't exercise his own right to free speech to "speak directly to statements made on campus" (as former Harvard President Lawrence Summers did when he opposed calls for divestment from Israel by terming such actions "anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent"), Dr. Drake ducked. "We have 1,000 guest speakers on campus every year. Could I evaluate them and say this one is anti-Semitic? I could not. What I could say is that as a person and a campus, we abhor hate speech, period."On the other hand, we have no room for a liberal law professor . whose views were well known before he was hired, who is squarely in the mainstream of modern constitutional thought . because we're afraid to take the heat that may be coming from some of Drake's biggest donors. While Drake told Erwin it was the Regents he was worried about, that was an out-and-out lie. He later admitted he didn't consult a one of them, and instead pointed to an op-ed Erwin wrote back in mid-August about death penalty procedure . even though he signed a contract with Chemerinsky three weeks after the op-ed was published.No, this was Drake's call, and it will doom his law school, if it doesn't doom him first.To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Hebrew University's Tokyo Rose

1.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B1DF75F4-D152-4CC7-ADB6-D40DF0FFB3CBJew Conspiracies at HuffingtonBy David HorowitzFrontPageMagazine.com | 9/19/2007It.s apparently the season for revivals of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion or variations thereof. This is the time worn paranoia that the Jews, while a miniscule fraction of the world.s population, nonetheless run it. The unspoken (and unexamined) implication is that the non-Jewish remainder of the human race is too stupid or too pathetic to thwart these designs. Obviously center stage in this conspiracy pageant for the moment is occupied by Walt and Mearsheimer.s new book The Israel Lobby, which is about the Hebrew puppeteers who pull the strings that make Bush and Cheney jump, and who also shape the media culture that persuades them. (Too bad someone forgot to tell the Hollywood Jews to make a film about Islamo-fascism or one supporting the neo-cons. adventure in Iraq). But the impressive pervasiveness of this mind-set throughout the .liberal. political spectrum may be better judged by a column that appeared in Huffington Post by former FBI agent, former Republican and now Jew sleuth, Coleen Rowley.

Ms. Rowley.s article is delicately titled .Never Doubt That a Small Group of Thoughtful, Neo-Cons Can Destroy The World.. Her thesis is Jew-conspiracy boilerplate: The right wing ruling Likud Party in Israel wanted a war with innocent, fragile and harmless Iraq. Therefore Likud.s amen corner in America went to work on the Bushies (and the media) to make it happen. Citing aleftwing blog authority, Rowley lists the top twelve neo-cons in America . or .dirty dozen. -- including Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Perle, Bolton, Podhoretz, Kagan and Ledeen. I have to interject a personal disclosure here: I did not make the top twelve. But I did make the .second tier. which includes Joe Lieberman, Charles Krauthammer, John Podhoretz, Jackie Mason, Ron Silver, Ted Koppel and Ken Pollack.

To explain the list she approvingly quotes from the blogger who provided it: .Neo-cons are conservative Jewish journalists and politicians linked to the right-wing Israeli Likud who support United States corporate, political, cultural and military imperialism with the use of pre-emptive World War if necessary . to rid themselves of the Muslim Menace.. In other words, the Great Satan and the Little Satan are out to persecute Muslims world-wide . and that.s what the war on terror is really about. And the Little Satan is really the force behind it.

To be fair to Miss Rowley, she makes a half-hearted attempt to qualify the extreme Jewophobia reflected in the list. According to Rowley it is .mostly. Jews who are the root of all evil. But .mostly. doesn.t really do justice to the design of the list: Jackie Mason but not Dennis Miller; Ron Silver but not Jon Voight; Ted Koppel (Ted Koppel?!) but not Sean Hannity, David Horowitz but not Christopher Hitchens or Victor Davis Hanson; and there.s Ken Pollack, a supporter of the surge in Iraq, but not his co-author Michael O.Hanlon, who qualifies only as his .buddy.. If this selectivity is not anti-Semitism, what is?

And then there.s the theory. Jews are responsible for the war in Iraq. In fact, the Likud government was opposed to the war with Iraq, since its main concern was Iran and Iran.s proxy army Hizbollah situated on Israel.s northern border. Rowley.s principal concern in writing the article, of course, is to protect Iran from any Neo-con pressures that would reign in its genodical, jihadist ambitions. According to Rowley . and this is the imminent threat -- the Neo-Con.s are revving up a new aggression: .They.ve given the ticket this time to first-string and first rate warmonger Michael Ledeen with his Iranian Time-Bomb book set to hit the airwaves and newsstands conveniently on the eve of 9/11..

How does Huffington Post come to print this ignorant and toxic garbage? It does so because it believes it. Of course if a patriotic Jew were to point out that Rowley and Huffington are merely parroting the propaganda of the Islamo-fascists themselves, there would be howls of outrage from progressives everywhere. How dare you question their loyalties in this war?

"I believe that the final objective of our rulers is to set the stage for the second Naqba. Otherwise what is the point of the endless goading of Palestinians into violence? ... These people (Israelis -- SP) are actually looking forward to the violence. They have their eyes on the real-estate prize - the West Bank.... Will the ethnic cleansing succeed? The authors of these policies obviously count on it.... It is likely that the forthcoming outburst of violence will be initiated by the desperate and destitute Palestinians; and then, for the umptieth time, our propaganda machine will be able to present us to the world as victims, and Palestinians as victimizers. Israeli responses will be presented as legitimate defensive actions. Later, the history may judge otherwise, but meanwhile (if the present political constellation persists for a while), who cares about the Palestinians.... The experience of South Africa suggests that the apartheid-type system imposed on Palestinians is not viable in the long run, even if it seems invincible at the beginning.... perhaps most importantly - the Dome of the Rock - the third holiest place of Islam - is at stake."

Want to tell the Hebrew University officials what you think of Victoria Buch playing Tokyo Rose for the anti-Semites?Hebrew University:President, Rector and Officers:

The Israeli and American Jewish supporters of Oslo have been asked to say special Selichos prayers this year in light of the terrible catastrophes inflicted upon Israel by the policies they have forced upon the country. The new Oslo Selichos go something like this:

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured the world that Arafat would pursue peace,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured the world that Hamas would be more of a threat to the PLO than to Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured the Jews that Arafat would fight the Hamas and Islamic Jihad with no Supreme Court or Betselem (to quote Rabin),

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that hostility to Jews in the Arab and the Moslem media would decrease,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured the Israelis that trade between Israel and Arab countries would flourish,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel us that the Palestinian Authority would be disarmed,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Palestinian Authority would cooperate strategically with the Israeli Defense Force,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel there would be an economic peace dividend,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Israeli Arabs would demonstrate increasing moderation due to the "peace process,.

Please forgive us..

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Hamas and Jihad would be persecuted and suppressed by the PLO,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Palestinian Authority arms would never again be used against Jews,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the PLO leadership would speak in terms of peace with the Jews,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the PLO would cease its efforts to delegitimize Zionism and Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel the PLO would denounce and renounce anti-Semitism, Nazism and Holocaust Denial,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Palestinian Authority would introduce democracy into the .Palestinian. zones,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Palestinian Authority would be forced to spend all its energies on resolving domestic social and economic problems,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the US would cease to pressure Israel to endanger its security and fundamental interests,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Europeans would rush forward to support Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Japanese and Saudis would pour money into regional investments, including into Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Egyptians would end all animosity towards Israel, Zionism and Jews,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the non-Arab Moslem countries would gush friendship for Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Arab military expenditure would drop significantly,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Arab verbal threats against Israel.s existence would end,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Nazi-like propaganda in Arab countries would end,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Israeli Left would lead the retreat from the Oslo experiment it if proved to be not working,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the Palestinian Authority would never turn into a tin-cup Third-World kleptocracy,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Jews remaining in Moslem countries would see their treatment dramatically improved,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Russia would act as a stabilizing force for peace,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that the majority of .Palestinians. would denounce violence and terror,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Israel Arabs would cease to support political parties dedicated to eliminating Israel,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we forced Israel to commit Oslo and assured Israel that Arab chants of In Fire and Blood will We Redeem Palestine, "Death to the Jews", and "Massacre the Jews" would end,

Please forgive us.

For the sin we committed when we assured the world that Oslo would NEVER lead to demands for negotiations concerning Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, that Israel would never be asked to returnto its 1949 Auschwitz borders, that the Jordan Valley, and Golan Heights would remain Israel's security borders forever,

Victor Davis Hanson on the New Wave of Anti-Semitism

September 15, 2007Who recently said: "These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War I. Why? Only to build Israel." Some holdover Nazi?Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews . whom he refers to as "bacteria" . controlled China, India and Japan, and ran the United States.Who alleged: "The Arabs who were involved in September 11 [2001] cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs." A conspiracy nut? Actually, it was former Democratic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota. He denounced Israel on a Hezbollah-owned television station, adding: "I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel.... It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery."And finally, who claimed at a U.N.-sponsored conference that democratic Israel was "much worse" than the former apartheid South Africa and that it "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming"? A radical environmentalist wacko? Again, no. It was Clare Short, a member of the British Parliament and Tony Blair's international development secretary.A new virulent strain of the old anti-Semitism is spreading worldwide. This hate . of a magnitude not seen in more than 70 years . is not just espoused by Iran's loony president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or radical jihadists. The latest anti-Semitism is also now mouthed by world leaders and sophisticated politicians and academics. Their loathing often masquerades as "anti-Zionism" or "legitimate" criticism of Israel. But the venom exclusively reserved for the Jewish state betrays existential hatred.Israel is always lambasted for entering homes in the West Bank to look for Hamas terrorists and using too much force. But last week the world snoozed when the Lebanese army bombarded and then crushed the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp, which harbored Islamic terrorists.The world has long objected to Jewish settlers buying up land in the West Bank. Yet Hezbollah, flush with Iranian money, is now purchasing large tracts in southern Lebanon for military purposes and purging them of non-Shi'ites.Here at home, "neoconservative" has become synonymous with a supposed Jewish cabal of Washington insiders who hijacked U.S. policy to take us to war for Israel's interest. That our State Department is at the mercy of a Jewish lobby is the theme of a recent high-profile book by professors at Harvard University and the University of Chicago.Yet when the United States bombed European and Christian Serbia to help Balkan Muslims, few critics claimed American Muslims had unduly swayed President Clinton. And charges of improper ethnic influence are rarely used to explain the billions in American aid given to nondemocratic Egypt, Jordan or the Palestinians . or the Saudi oil money that pours into U.S. universities.The world likewise displays such a double standard. It seems to care little about the principle of so-called occupied land . whether in Cyprus or Tibet . unless Israel is the accused. Mass murdering in Cambodia, the Congo, Rwanda and Darfur has earned far fewer United Nations' resolutions of condemnation than supposed atrocities committed by Israel. A number of British academics are sponsoring a boycott of Israeli scholars but leave alone those from autocratic Iran, China and Cuba.

There are various explanations for the new anti-Semitism. For many abroad, attacking Jews and Israel is an indirect way of damning its main ally, the United States . by implying Americans are not entirely evil, just hoodwinked by those sneaky and far more evil Jews.

At home, there are obvious pragmatic considerations. Some Americans may find it makes more sense to damn a few million Israelis without oil than it does to offend Israel's adversaries in the Middle East, who number in the hundreds of millions and control nearly half the world's petroleum reserves.

Cowardice explains a lot. Libeling Israel won't earn someone a fatwa or a death sentence in the manner comparable criticism of Islam might. There are no Jewish suicide bombers in London, Madrid or Bali. This new face of anti-Semitism is so insidious because it is so well disguised, advanced by self-proclaimed diplomats and academics . and now embraced by the supposedly sophisticated left on university campuses.When national, collective or personal aspirations are not met, it is far easier to blame someone or something rather than to look within for the source of the failure and frustration. More recently, someone must be blamed for getting terrorists (with oil and its profits behind them) mad at us.That someone is . no surprise . once again Jews.Victor Davis Hanson is a nationally syndicated columnist and a classicist and historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and author of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

The Norman Finkelstein affair at DePaul University was not yet buried whenan entire revisionist "narrative" of the affair was being churned out by theFar Left. A bit of revisionism was to be expected, one supposes, regardingthe favorite "academic" of those promoting Holocaust Revisionism and "NewHistory" about World War II. After all, Finkelstein had made his name in themedia by cheering Hezbollah's terror attacks on Jews, by arguing thatGermany is the victim of greedy dishonest Jews, that nearly all thoseclaiming to be Holocaust survivors are liars, thieves, and hoaxers, thusfeeding the lunatic fringe that claims that the entire Holocaust of SixMillion Jews by Nazi Germany was a Zionist hoax. Neo-Nazi web sites hailedhim as the "Jew who proved that the Holocaust was a hoax." Finkelstein hadrepeatedly proclaimed Holocaust Denier and pseudo-historian David Irving ashis role model and hero, even when Irving was sitting in a Vienna prison forNeo-Nazi propagandizing. Finkelstein baselessly smeared just about everyone,from Holocaust writer Elie Wiesel to Alan Dershowitz, the latter whomFinkelstein falsely accused of plagiarism. Finkelstein physically threatenedhis own Dean. But in spite of all this, the scope of Finkelsteinianrevisionism emerging the past few weeks and its willingness to employ theBig Lie are still shocking.

Finkelsteinian revisionism simply and completely falsifies every singleaspect of the hiring and firing of Norman Finkelstein by DePaul University.It claims that the Chicago master of vulgar ad hominem defamation washimself the innocent "victim" of ad hominem attacks. It seeks to attributeFinkelstein's career failure to the all-but-nonexistent "Israel Lobby,"while overlooking the bizarre alliance of hatred and bigotry comprising theFinkelstein Lobby. Finkelstein's apologists are leaders in the pro-terrorArab Lobby, the sorts of people who readily believe everything about theMiddle East except the facts. They include everyone from the "RevolutionaryCommunists," to the "anarchists," to the Islamists, to David Duke and theNeo-Nazi fruit loops, to a handful of Jewish leftwing loonies. All these arerunning about the cyber-world proclaiming that Finkelstein was the "victim"of nefarious sinister conspiracy by you know whom. Perhaps it is their wayof coping with their disappointment at not having been among those recruitedby Mohammed Ata.

Finkelstein's apologists claim he fell victim to academic politicization.But the simple truth is that Finkelstein was one of the country's mostobvious *beneficiaries *of academic politicization. Nothing else can explainthe outpouring of support for such a ridiculous buffoon, fraud, and juvenilesmear-monger. The campaign on behalf of Finkelstein has succeeded in onething - in drawing light to the fact that academia is crawling withpseudo-scholarly extremists who have made a career out of ladling outpolitical advocacy and extremist agitprop. In fact, the recruitment ofpolitical support on behalf of such a character as Finkelstein demonstrateshow dishonest and unscrupulous the Bash-Israel Lobby is willing to sink.

Obviously Finkelstein was not fired because DePaul is hostile toanti-American and anti-Israel radical faculty members and opinion. *Aucontraire*! The *only reason* the political science department at DePaul hadhired Finkelstein in the first place, in spite of the total absence ofacademic journal publications on his resume, was that they *APPROVED *ofFinkelstein's bash-Israel and hate-America political extremism. The simplefact of the matter is that someone with Finkelstein's "academic record"would never have been hired by DePaul's political science department at allhad he been pro-Israel, pro-America, or politically conservative. And nosuch person would have attracted an entire lobby of kibitzers on his behalf.The ONLY reason that *any* of the faculty members in political science atDePaul had endorsed Finkelstein's bid for tenure was that *they* approved ofhis political extremism and vulgarity, willing to overlook his total lack ofscholarly credentials as a gesture of political solidarity with him. Threemembers of the DePaul political science department had the courage to resistthe naked political machinations on behalf of Finkelstein. They are themodest heroes of the entire affair.

Not only is DePaul not hostile to radicals, America haters, supporters ofterrorism, and anti-Semites, but it came dangerously close to grantingFinkelstein tenure as a form of political solidarity, at least before themajority on the DePaul Promotions Committee returned to its senses.Ultimately the Finkelstein Lobby lost because DePaul chose to enforce andimpose academic integrity and serious scholarly standards upon its ownfaculty, and of course also to conduct campus denazification two generationsafter the end of World War II.

The Klocek affair also illustrates the truth, which naturally is in directcontradiction to the claims of Finkelstein revisionism. Members of theFinkelstein Lobby claims that they only support Finkelstein as part of theirdesire to defend academic freedom at DePaul. But I doubt that a singlemember of that Lobby has spoken out in defense of Thomas Klocek's academicfreedom! To the contrary, most Finkelstein apologists go out of their way todefend the *firing *of Klocek. After all, he is pro-Israel and we can't haveany pro-Israel opinions being voiced on politically correct campuses. Therewas indeed a victim of "thought crime" persecution at DePaul, but it was notNorman Finkelstein.

Even more absurd have been the efforts by the Finkelstein Lobby to paintFinkelstein as some sort of "scholar" who was fired because of hiscontroversial political opinions. No doubt he is regarded as such by mostmembers of the Taliban. In part, the DePaul administration is to blame forthis. In the September "joint statement" that allowed DePaul to be rid ofFinkelstein and revoke his "terminal year of employment," the school paidlip service to Finkelstein's being a supposed "prolific scholar andoutstanding teacher." He is of course neither. Clearly the DePaul brass werewilling to tell some little white lies if that were the price of being ridof him. Finkelstein is not a scholar of any sort, but rather is a full timeanti-Semitic propagandist and generator of hate screeds. At *that* he isindeed prolific. That is why his cheerleaders support him, includingself-conscripted radicals from academia. As for his being an "outstandingteacher," he was indeed popular with the campus leftist fringe and studentadmirers of Middle East terrorism, who filled his classes. These gave himhigh teaching evaluations because they like his politics. Ward Churchill nodoubt also was a popular teacher. So what? Courses in Holocaust Denial atsome schools can be filled with local Hitlerjugend granting the lectureroutstanding teaching evaluations.

Any self-respecting institution of higher learning must make sure thatcourse content consists of actual academic research and analysis, notpopulist political indoctrination, no matter how much radical students seekthe latter. And speaking of little white lies, much of the media werewilling to accept at face value claims by the Finkelstein Lobby about"hundreds" of DePaul students rallying on campus in early September to backFinkelstein. A fast look at this newsphoto<http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2007-09/32339796.jpg>ofthe event shows that there were less than 25 people present, some ofwhommight have been DePaul students.

Finkelstein's greatest "scholarly" achievement was commissioning andpublishing<http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/world/2006/08/348915.html>anobscenecartoon<http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=%7bE8779737-1B43-4214-967C-444C5FB9BE23%7d>ofAlan Dershowitz masturbating while watching Lebanese children die.Finkelstein has yet to publish a single scholarly paper in a refereed bonafide academic journal, not even in the anti-Israel ones, of which there isno shortage. Finkelstein built his entire "career" on churning outanti-Jewish "books," snatched up by publishers indifferent to academicquality and interested only in their commercial potential. Finkelstein's"books" were almost universally dismissed by serious historians (meaning,those working for the something *other* than the annihilation of Israel) asfraud, as defamation of Holocaust survivors, and as amateurish one-sidedanti-Israel propagandizing. The New York Times compared these to the czaristforgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Finkelstein's closest "research"associate was the Holocaust Denier Brazilian Arab cartoonist"Latuff<http://www.adl.org/main_Arab_World/cartoon_contest.htm>."

The whining about "outside pressure" upon DePaul was the height of hypocrisyby the Finkelstein Lobby. There was indeed plenty of outside pressure onDePaul, but most of it *was in favor* of Finkelstein. The Finkelstein Lobbyorganized countless petitions and letter writing campaigns to DePaulofficers on behalf of their guru. The Anti-Israel Lobby provided massiveartillery support for Finkelstein. Only Jimmy Carter was missing. Indeed,the entire operation of the campaign to get tenure for Finkelstein at DePaulinvolved the cynical manipulation of the academic system by DePaul radicalsconniving with extremists outside their university. The tale is a classicillustration of how campus hiring and promotion can be subordinated topolitical corruption and manipulation.

"Lustick dismisses the concept of terrorism as a valid conceptual term.Instead, he embraces what he terms an 'extensive', as opposed to an'intensive', definition of terrorism that is not bound by any limiting'conditions'. This, he claims, enables one to classify activities as'terrorist' if they encompass any violent 'actions and threats' bygovernmental militaries and even 'tax collectors', as well as insurgents."

The second "neutral evaluator" of Finkelstein was JohnMearsheimer<http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/>of the University ofChicago, best known for his dredging up medieval bloodlibels together with Stephen Walt about an imaginary Jewish cabal thatcontrols the world. Both letters were part of the most outrageous example ofChicago ballot stuffing since the days of the elder Mayor Daley. These"evaluations" were fed to the handpicked political science evaluationcommittee as a tactic to get Finkelstein smuggled through for tenure.

It did not work, because the campus promotions committee at DePaul sawthrough the naked manipulation and voted against tenure for Finkelstein andagainst the Finkelstein Lobby. The Dean of Liberal Arts at DePaul went tothe trouble of reading all of Finkelstein's mind-bogglingly idiotic "books"for himself, to form his own independent opinion. It needs to be emphasizedthat Finkelstein was canned because his own colleagues at DePaul ultimatelyrefused to be browbeaten into giving a pseudo-academic buffoon tenure on thebasis of "outside evaluations" that expressed little more than politicalsolidarity with Finkelstein's extremism and bigotry.

True, there were plenty of people who were understandably outraged atFinkelstein's obscene rantings, and some of these expressed themselves inpublic, just as lots of folks have long been ready to call on the Universityof Colorado to do something about Ward Churchill. Alan Dershowitz is beingaccredited by the media and the Finkelstein Lobby with the most devastatingof these "outside pressures." But Dershowitz' professional opinion ofFinkelstein was recruited byDePaul<http://www.alandershowitz.com/publications/docs/depaulletter.htm>itself.(And even unsolicited outside letters of evaluation arenot so unusual<http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/2100/interdisciplinarity_and_tenure>inacademia.) In any case, Dershowitz' lobbying against Finkelstein paledinits weight in comparison with the campaign on Finkelstein's behalf by thejihaniks in the Middle East Studies Association, or the repeated expressionsof support for Finkelstein by the bats in the ivory belfry of the AmericanAssociation of University Professors. Noam Chomsky was no doubt the mostoutspoken and shrill outside lobbyist, in spite of the fact that Chomsky isbut a linguist (and a discredited one at that), not a political scientist.The bottom line is that "outside pressure" had little to do with Finkelsteingetting turned down for tenure, but had everything to do with his havingbeen hired and then proposed for possible tenure in the first place!

Finkelstein is almost universally regarded as an anti-Semite, and isregarded as a Holocaust Denier by the Anti-Defamation League, by the SimonWiesenthal Center (Finkelstein smears the latter as "Disneyland in Dachau"),and others. Finkelstein generally uses the expression "Six Million Jewskilled by Hitler" with quotation marks. Finkelstein seems proud to beproclaimed the "Jewish David Irving," and has never denounced Irving'sHolocaust Denial. Finkelstein's firing strongly resembles the dismissal ofthe French Holocaust Denier RobertFaurrison<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Faurisson>from auniversity in France. Faurrison is also proclaimed a great scholar byhis apologists, who again claim he was a "victim" of persecution by a Jewishcabal. And Noam Chomsky has led <http://www.wernercohn.com/Chomsky.html> thepublic campaign on behalf of BOTH!

The Finkelstein Lobby likes to counter arguments about Finkelstein'sfraudulent "scholarship" by citing praise for him by Raul Hilberg, awell-known Holocaust historian who died recently. But Hilberg praisedFinkelstein as an act of petty solidarity simply because Finkelstein hadearlier smeared Hilberg's own arch-nemesis, the historian Daniel JonahGoldhagen. It was an example of Middle East style vendetta, where "the enemyof my enemy is my friend." Exiled to rural Vermont, Hilberg was bitter andhostile towards a "Jewish establishment" that he felt granted himinsufficient recognition, and was willing to praise a vicious anti-Semite inorder to poke his finger in their eye. For a good laugh, ask a Finkelsteinlobbyist to name a *second *Holocaust historian who has praised Finkelstein.

One of the silliest claims of the Finkelstein Lobby had to do with the caseof Mehrene Larudee, a DePaul radical faculty member who was also turned downfor tenure at the same time as Finkelstein. The Finkelstein Lobby claims shewas the "target" of the Zionist bogeyman. But there were no criticisms atall in the media against Larudee before she was denied tenure, no publiccalls to dismiss her. Virtually no one had ever heard of her, which turnsout to be most of her problem. Her academic record was nearly empty.Claiming to be an economist, her publications were not enough to get hertenured anywhere. The Finkelstein Lobby claims she was fired for endorsingFinkelstein. But lots of people at DePaul endorse Finkelstein because theylike his political extremism, and virtually no one even knew that Larudeewas one of those. In fact, the dual dismissal of Finkelstein and Larudeeattests, if anything, to the fact that DePaul was simply getting serious atlong last about academic standards.

DePaul after all is a Catholic University, not exactly an appendage of theZionist bogeyman. The attempt by the Finkelstein Lobby to blameFinkelstein's demise on "The Israel Lobby" simply shows how deep theanti-Semitism is that drives Finkelstein revisionists, and how thoroughlydishonest the Finkelstein Lobby is. One of its members, Matthew Abraham fromDePaul itself, claims the IsraelLobby<http://www.counterpunch.org/abraham09082007.html>paid DePaulmillions of dollars to fire Finkelstein. Perhaps he should go towork for the government of Iran.

Representation of the Finkelstein dismissal by DePaul as extortion by the"Israel Lobby" is not only patently absurd, but smacks of the sort ofanti-Semitic libels about a "Jewish cabal" once found in *Der Sturmer* inthe 1930s. If anything from the outside affected DePaul, it was the factthat the Church saw Finkelstein's association with a Catholic university tobe an unending source of embarrassment and disgrace.

The Finkelstein apologists insist that Finkelstein was a courageous crusaderwilling to defy the "Zionist Lobby," which supposedly suppresses criticismof Israel, and to challenge the oppressive force of campus conformism. Andit will repeat this Big Lie style for as long as you fail to walk away.Anyone who thinks that it takes courage to spout off anti-Israel oranti-American platitudes on American campuses must have been on anotherplanet these past few decades. It is about as courageous as denouncingIsrael and the United States in the Syrian press. If the "Israel Lobby" isin control of the media and terrorizing anti-Zionist academics, it is doingan awfully poor job of it. The liberal media are overflowing with hatred ofIsrael, and the real endangered species on campus are the conservatives andIsrael supporters.

The more an academic screams about the need for diversity, the more likelyit is that he or she belongs to a university department that contains not asingle non-leftist. The Finkelstein Affair threw terror into the hearts ofthe hordes of pseudo-academic leftist faculty members with theirembarrassingly skimpy resumes, often consisting of nothing but leftistagitprop and political propagandizing. Ward Churchillreally<http://www.academicfreedomchicago.org/?q=node/59>wantedFinkelstein to get tenure. The Finkelstein revisionists are horrifiedat the idea that their academic records could be publicly examined and themanipulations that got them tenured exposed. No wonder they came out forFinkelstein with all claws extended.

The reality is that bashing Israel on campus is the easiest and morally mostcowardly thing one can do these days, aside being the first resort of ascoundrel and a bigot. Academics and students standing up to the Anti-IsraelLobby today require an ever-growing amount of moxie and guts.